Despite the backlash from pro-EU Georgians and pressure from the West, the Georgian Dream party under the informal leadership of Bidzina Ivanishvili shows . The government claims it is aimed at transparency, but critics say it represents an authoritarian turn for Georgia.
So how did Ivanishvili become Georgia’s most powerful man, and what is his endgame?
Fears of Putin and loyalties to Moscow
“He leads a sterile and ascetic lifestyle, Gia Khukhashvili, a former advisor and friend of Georgia’s informal ruler , told DW. ” He doesn’t keep many people around him. He is a hermit.”
Enigmatic Ivanishvili, former prime minister and now Honorary Chairman of the ruling Georgian Dream party, is a man of seemingly unlimited power and fabulous wealth.
In the 1980s, he left Georgia to attend a university in Moscow. Almost a decade later, during Russia’s dashing 90s, his path to becoming a billionaire started. On the ruins of the Soviet Empire, when the stray money seemed to grow on the trees of privatisation, becoming rich was a matter of right connections with the Kremlin.
In 1990s Moscow, Ivanishvili became a banking and metal tycoon, making up an exclusive group of Russian oligarchy. Ivanishvili also owned 1% of Gazprom shares that he claimed to have sold before entering Georgian politics.
“He would tell me very proudly that it was his idea to ask the Russian FSB to protect the oligarchs,” his former advisor Kukhashvili claims. “But other than that, we did not talk about his life in Russia, and he did not mention any friends there.”
According to the official narrative, Ivanishvili left Russia in 2002–2003. The common legend goes that he left Moscow because of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“He said that he moved to Georgia because he feared Putin. When he saw him on TV marching down the Kremlin aisle, he understood that Putin wouldn’t let him live peacefully,” Khukhashvili recalled his private conversations with Ivanishvili.
In 2011, Ivanshvili decided to turn into a politician and founded the “Georgian Dream” party. After beating his sworn rival Mikheil Saakashvili in the 2012 parliamentary elections, Ivanisvili’s tenure as prime minister lasted only a year. Observers and his former allies say that he left politics only formally to rule the country from the shadows .
Pro-Western facade?
Ivanishvili’s appealing wealth and confrontation with then-President Mikheil Saakashvili’s rising authoritarian tactics dazzled many of his former allies. They believed or wanted to appear to believe in Ivanishvili’s pro-Western course and broken links with Russia.
“He said he sold out his activities in Russia and was free of the Russian grip. We were always talking about Euro-Atlantic integration, and at some point I stopped believing in it. I saw that we were moving in a different direction. But the voters believed that they were still going to Europe,” former president of Georgia and ally of Ivanishvili Giorgi Margvelashvili told DW.
Since the beginning of its rule, the Georgian Dream government has been officially committed to joining the EU and NATO. However, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Georgian Dream officials started targeting Western officials, accusing them of wanting to drag Georgia in the Ukraine war as “a second front”.
In a rare speech, Bidzina Ivanishvili, defending the “foreign influence” bill, accused the West of meddling in Georgian affairs and causing conflict with its neighbor Russia.
“Georgia and Ukraine were not allowed to join NATO and were left outside. All such decisions are made by the “Global War Party,” which has a decisive influence on NATO and the European Union and which only sees Georgia and Ukraine as cannon fodder”, Ivanisvhili said at a pro-government rally in April.
“Russia has invaded Georgia twice in the last 30 years. This is one thing when Georgians have rational fear, and another when the government utilizes the fear for its propaganda and justifies any actions it takes,”Margelashvili told DW.
Ivanishvili’s survival strategy
Georgia’s former prime minister in the Georgia Dream government and former ally of Ivanishvili, Giorgi Gakharia, associated Georgia’s illiberal turn and the introduction of the “foreign influence” bill with Ivanishvili’s survival strategy.
“He will put all his resources into maintaining the power. His own wealth is paying the price of the country’s democracy and foreign orientation. He is now protecting himself; he thinks that there are no actors who could grant his security; only power can.”
Critics suggest the so-called “foreign agents” bill, also dubbed as “Russian law” by pro- EU protesters, is aimed at suppressing the opposition and election watchdogs before parliamentary elections next October.
“The ‘Russian law’ is a done deal. The problem now is how to conduct fair elections. Ivanishvili is afraid of two things: not getting legitimacy from Georgians if they massively do not recognise the elections, and international legitimacy. If these two overlap in October, he is done.”
Sanctions, conspiracy theories, and disputes with Credit Suisse
After the introduction of the “foreign influence” bill, which critics say would put Georgia’s Western trajectory at risk, the EU Parliament adopted the resolution calling on sanctions against Ivanishvili.
In a similar move, US lawmakers are expected to introduce a bill against Georgian officials. Western sanctions are seen as an attempt to force the Georgian government to kill the controversial bill that sparked mass protests in the country.
However, the prime minister Irakli Kobakhidze claims that “informal sanctions” against Ivanishvili are already in place.
“Bidzina Ivanishvili said that he was already under de – facto sanctions because he had frozen 2 billion US dollars that he had entrusted to the West, but which turned up in the hands of the “Global War Party,” Kobakhidze said, referring to a mysterious organization that, according to some Georgian Dream officials, is run by “freemasonry”.
Since 2021, Ivanishvili has been waging a legal war with Credit Suisse, claiming that one of his bankers was involved in a crooked scheme that did not allow him to unfreeze his money at the bank. In Ivanishvili’s eyes, the litigation is mainly due to the “Global War Party”conspiracy against him orchestrated by the United States and EU.
“When you don’t believe in democracy, you don’t believe in the independence of institutions and check-and-balance systems. And at the same time, you are trying to maintain power; conspiracy theory is the easy way,” Gakharia told DW.
While there are different suggestions to why the government decided to revive the controversial law, former president Margvelashvili believes that the bill plays right into Putin’s hands.
“Look at Georgia; they’ve been struggling for 30 years for their independence, and they still come back to Russia. This will echo with Ukrainians. No matter what you do today, you will come back to Russia.”
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